ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation Big Site/Big Company SEM Search Engine Strategies, New York March 3, 2005

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 2 What makes a big Web site so hard to work with?  Multiple specialist teams  Multiple product sites  Multiple audiences  Multiple countries  Multiple technologies

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 3 ibm.com is a large, complex corporate Web site  83 countries, 31 languages  Thousands of products  Large, medium, small business, and consumer audiences Many “cooks” for the broth:  User Experience: overall look and feel  IT: Portlets and operations  Product owners, copy editors, graphics designers: information about offerings  Marketing: audience-based messages and promotions

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 4 Big sites are impervious to changes for SEM  Difficult to diagnose what is wrong  Very hard to get everyone to do the same thing  Technology changes are often very costly  Every change requires approvals and “processes”) and takes a very long time

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 5 But big sites have advantages as well  Much easier to get links, although they may be to the home page  Well-known brands draw many more clicks from searchers  More people that can do the work, if motivated  If you use “processes” to your advantage, you can use the system against itself

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 6 Search marketing must meet your site’s goals Learn Buy Shop Use Get Search Some sites lead to offline activity Online PC Sales? Search Consulting? Le Learn Engage Select Collaborate

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 7 Use metrics to show the value of search marketing  How many search visitors come to buy?  The right search result puts the visitor in the “Learn” stage to view a product page.  How many customers that view a product page put items in their carts?  And how many check out?  Multiply by your average revenue and you have the impact of search on revenue. Learn Buy Shop Use Get Search You must justify the resources you will need for a big site program

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 8 Explain the value of keyword planning  Pick the must-win keywords and the landing page for each one  Stopping bidding wars between business units in paid search might justify your program by itself

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 9 Start a centralized search marketing program  Your central team handles everything you need to do in one place in your organization  But their most important job is working with your extended team—all of those specialists that already run your Web site:  Copy writers  Product managers  IT folks  etc.

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 10 Training the extended team is the main job  Explain why search is important—they all want the site to be successful and they all search themselves  The specialists on your extended search team need different training in their own languages:  Copy writers: Keyword rich  Product Managers: Keywords  IT folks: Spider traps  etc.

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 11 Analyze your organizational structure Product- Oriented Multinational Functional Conglomerate

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 12 Decide what tasks you must centralize TaskFunctionalProduct- Oriented MultinationalConglomerate Targeting search engines Central ExtendedCentral Planning keywords CentralExtended Central Reporting metrics Central Extended Defining standards Central Extended Organization type influences the right place for each task

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 13 Big sites can rank well in organic search  Start at the “bottom”  Get your pages indexed  Your links will get you to the top of the rankings  Your brand name draws clicks  …if you can just optimize that pesky content

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 14 Use the big company management system  Change existing standards  Use the existing compliance system to enforce those standards  What processes do you have?  Project reviews  Promotion checkpoints  Legal review

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 15 Fix your infrastructure to get your pages indexed  Set standards to control spider traps:  Ban frames, pop-ups, JavaScript links, etc.  Regulate Flash, cookies, dynamic pages  Correct robots directives  Redirect pages properly  Enforce standards with existing processes whenever possible

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 16 Enforce search-friendly coding templates Modify authoring processes to foster best practices Currently #1 of 1.4 million results

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 17 Use internal scorecards to improve results Score each business unit every month and publicize the results internally Track titles, broken links, search rankings, traffic, and conversions

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 18 With everything fixed, links will put you on top  Big sites attract links  Use site maps to attract huge PageRank that you can fan out to your interior pages  Get partners to link to your interior pages

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 19 IBM’s program has yielded strong results  Spider traps removed from infrastructure so pages are indexed  Over two million pages in Google  Centralized keyword planning eliminated paid bidding wars  Over 1000 terms in top 10  Over 15% of all page views now come from search  Pilot projects have improved conversion over 50% Keyword Ranking Traffic from Search Conversions Pages Indexed

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation 20 Coming this summer  Manage a search marketing program in your company  Develop a strategy that supports your Web site’s goals  Get conversions, not just rankings  Execute your program step by step  For more information:

ibm.com © 2005 IBM Corporation Big Site/Big Company SEM Mike Moran Manager, Site Architecture and Design ibm.com, Sales & Distribution Bill Hunt President/CEO Global Strategies International Available online --